Born in Mitchell Ontario on September 1902, Howarth was the youngest among six children of a railway worker. An active boy, his mother wanted him to take piano lessons.Never able to play with more than one finger Ma went to investigate only to find that Howie's trip to lessons only lasted as far as the Thames river where he stopped to play hockey with the bigger kids.
Dad got a better job with the Canadian National Railroad and the family moved. Howie who had long since given up on the piano, at fourteen also found work with the CNR and found himself a member of the Stratford Midgets. Often he would play a game for the Midgets in the afternoon and a game for the CNR team at night. They say he slept in the locomotive shop on those days. You see in the day men played for their employer. I have met men who played for local mining companies, they talk of privilege and respect from their bosses and, surprisingly to me, their coworkers. These laborers took pride in the team that represented them even as the upper management claimed status. I guess the money had not muddied the world to the extent it now does. Jealousy had not robbed men of respect.
Mr. Morenz became a celebrated player in that town of Stratford. I've read even today stories are told about him. Like the time he swooped around the net so suddenly he cut the toes out of the goal judges rubbers or when he dropped a piece of steel on his foot at the yards and could not get his shoe on yet somehow got it in a skate to win the game and than had to have his skate cut off afterward. The Stratford team became a powerhouse going on to win the provincial title in only two years.
Of course it wasn't long before the pros had to have him. Toronto, Saskatoon and Victoria all came calling but it was at a Stratford game in Montreal where he scored nine, or as the legend goes, eleven goals that the Canadians decided they would pull all the stops. And they did. Leo Dandurand, a Montreal owner, told his guy to pay Howie $2300.oo a season and as a signing bonus clean up any debt he or family had around town. Morenz signed. Even after that Howie didn't really want to leave the team which was his identity and a local Minister had even started a petition to keep him in Stratford. So, reluctantly, the Canadians threatened to make public that Howie had already been payed to play amateur hockey in Stratford and he agreed to stay in Montreal.
The big league was where most fans of pro hockey know his tale. 247 goals and 197 assists over fourteen seasons does not sound like many today but the game was different than, seasons were shorter. He played in the NHL seven years before there was an all star game yet was selected three times. Twice he lead the league in scoring, once he scored thirty goals in thirty games and in the 1928-29 season he he got forty in forty four.Three times he won the Hart Trophy as the leagues most valuable player. Yet what was most impressive was not how many he got but how he got them. As I mentioned hockey was different, forward passing was discouraged so Howie would carry the puck from end to end flipping the puck over defending players and retrieving it himself leaving defense-men literally adjusting their cup he twisted them up so bad. King Clancy, who had played against him, claimed he was the best he had ever seen "he could stop on a dime and leave nine cents change" he wrote of him.
In this era of sport known as the 'Golden Age' the world was witness to greats such as Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey. Howie Morenz was hockey's brightest star.They say it was seeing Howie play in Montreal that convinced the founder of the 1924 New York Rangers hockey could fly there and I have read more than one hockey historian claim it was Morenz that kept the NHL afloat in Detroit, Boston and Chicago.
By all accounts Howie loved life. He loved hockey, kids and the race track. He enjoyed people and always had a story of hockey to tell anyone who would listen. They say he could not drive by a game of pickup hockey without joining in and sometimes he would go downtown just to meet and shake hands with fans. He always dressed with class and was a definitive figure of the roaring twenty's, pleased to be in the company of the rich and famous. There are pictures of him waving from Al Capone's roadster, no never talk of any gambling scandal.
In the thirties it seemed Morenz was slowing and his career over. Traded first to Chicago than the Rangers he was ineffective. Then the Montreal owner Dandurand sold his interest in the sputtering Canadians. As a result, Cecil Hart, the son of the man the Hart Trophy had been named, was asked to return as coach. As a condition of returning Hart asked Morenz be returned. Management complied.
Reunited with line mates Auril Juiat and Johnny 'black Cat' Gagnon the Canadians climbed to first in the Canadian division of the NHL.
On January 28,1937, Morenz played his last game. The game was at the Forum the opponents were the Black Hawks and the player name was Earl Siebert. Although no one who saw the hit blames him. Morenz apparently caught an edge and Siebert fell over him. Morenz's leg was broken in five places and he was rushed to the hospital where some forty days later he died. Some say it was the parties in the room, some say heart attack. It is a fact that he suffered a nervous breakdown while there which would lead me to believe that although by all accounts he was in good spirits he must have realized he would never play again.
I believe as do many historians of our great game the great Howie Moranz died of a broken heart.
The funeral was the greatest outpouring of public grieve this nation had ever expressed. The body lay in state at center ice in the Forum while services were conducted. Outside some 200,000 people stood in mourning as the coffin was carried through the streets of Montreal.
Berlin blue-liner haunted by Morenz's death
related facts
Howie started as a goalie but changed his mind after having twenty six scored against in a game!
Earl Siebert, the player who delivered the check , died of Cancer in 1990. Despite contributing to hockey history himself with a stellar career in the NHL" the league sent no one to his funeral, nor did it telephone its condolences, send flowers or mail so much as a card."
Bernie ' Boom Boom' Geoffrion was Mr. Morenz's son-in-law.
Howard William (Howie) Morenz and the Montreal Canadiens have long been credited as instrumental in bringing together a City divided by language and faith. Demonstrated by the thousands of French Roman Catholics attending the funeral of an Ontario Anglo Protestant.
Eight years after his funeral Morenz was the first player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
No comments:
Post a Comment